1. It's not Alan Moore, I've never even met the man. It's me pretending to be Alan Moore. Badly. Can't get the voice right for a start. In no way am I claiming that Alan Moore wrote any of the above. 'Alan Moore' (the one on this page) is a fictional creation. The Alan Moore who lives in the Alan Moore House in Northampton is completely unaware that this blog, (let alone Me and the Him) even exist.2 I'm just pretending to be him because I'm a massive fanboy, have no way of getting in touch with the big guy to ask if he'd write an intro, and this is a lot less hassle than - say - becoming a magician or something twp like that.232. Correct at time of typing.

23. I started reading up on magick properly and it just sounds like a cross between New Age spirituality and self-help, but with more striding around like you own the place. Not my scene really.

Sunday, 26 February 2017

Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals
exist, and each individual is different.- Robert Anton Wilson

When Pat Mills first mentioned the idea of a
sci-fi comic to me, I didn’t think it would work.- John Wagner

If you write about something you understand (or have researched) and
give yourself time, a solution to a problem will occur.- Pat Mills, April 1987

The past
is quicksand.

I don’t reallymeasure time in notebooks, that was just a way of grabbing your attention.Sure, I use them as landmarks, but I also use
whatever I’m reading at the time, life-changing events and a clock.All of these’ll be making an appearance in the
following paragraphs.Except for the
clock.

I’ve been putting this off.I know why,
but it’s a cheat to admit that, much better to pace the flat looking
tortured.I’m floating in coffee. There’s a playlist of tracks based on The Mighty One’s Organ throbbing away.0Let’s do some time-twisting. Let's talk about thirty-plus years of comics, music
and living in popular culture’s fringes like a transtextual headlouse.

We’ll start just
before the end, and see where this thing disguised as a revisit of Tharg's head finishes up.

2016
was a thieving bastard of a year.Not
only did it steal all those people who landscaped our possible pasts, but it
also walked off with three of my school-friends.Every
death acted like a stick in the mud of the Nostalgia Estuary, turning the
usual blank grey a full-on shitty brown, all to a soundtrack lifted from late-Eighties
and early-Nineties Sunday Chart Shows.

Taxi to the airports booked.Can’t sleep,
naturally.Manage two hours in the end.

I ended up immersing in The KLF and Sheep On Drugs for the month leading up to this, recapturing
what my youth tasted like.Ink, mostly: warm, drying Parker; hot photocopier dust; Quink; Indian; Rotring or swimmy
Banda fumes stinging like snorted vodka. All ink-based.All blending under the
main layer of Printer’s that made up the readable parts of the comics and
music press that're entwined throughout whatever’s approaching.

I’ve finished the John Higgs book that’s almost about The KLF and started on
the Steve MacManus biography concentrating on his time as 2000 AD's editor.The second one’s
not as obviously full of mad synchronicity, magic and satirical religions in
super-positions, but does have some juicy drinking tales.There's a taxi waiting in an outside that looks
like Fraser Irving’s designed it.

It’s cold and the driver doesn’t remember me.By the first set of lights he’s telling me about how the WISE Group are
the Real Rulers Of The Country.Embarrassed,
I admit I’ve never heard of them. He gives me all the background I can eat while the wheels chew up the road.The taxi
interior is thick with the memory of tobacco and the swirled capes of the
Rothschilds.Outside glistens orange
and black, undulating by like a pack of cybertigers.WISE stands for Wales, Ireland, Scotland and
England and the subjugation of everyone who doesn’t already know that.The taxi slides up against the side of the
white zone like a dolphin flirting with a sailor and my driver says, “You know
who’s really in charge, aye?I mean, really in charge?”

I’ve opened the door and, like the other passengers up and down the red zone,
started unloading.

I’m standing for a few seconds working out if I’m paying for the lift or
the information, trying to laugh off the electric wave that’s just rushed up
my back and made my arms bumpy.I
can’t think of anything to say.

“Thanks.”

He’s gone into the now-Milleresque, weird morning
lightI shift my bag on my shoulder and head
quickly into the future.After all,
there’s just no stopping in a white zone.

Brief hours later, I'm playing sardines with strangers in a crammed tube with wings. It breaks through the cloud layer, rising into a childhood sky that’s nothing more than a tarpaulin made of GI
skins stretched taut.And, like the past, what’s beyond the ice-fronded window would kill you if
you tried to live in it.As durable and
adaptable as a person appears to be, it’s all a matter of scale and
hubris.The past is an inhospitable
place, full of terrible teeth and hot, offal breath.

Because we’re living in the future now, I can’t buy a coffee with anything
analogue.Instead I suck on travel
sweets to try and stop my ears bleeding, and read up to Steve MacManus’ 1986
swansong.His 1987 kicks off proper on
page 230, but that’s still two days away for me.

I tuck the book away as we descend through the cheap cloud effects that signify the
transition layer between then and now.We land in Brit-Cit and get shuttled to the red zone for immediate
unloading.Kev J, a gentleman’s gent,
gets us onto the M23 in short order.We
spend most of the journey catching up.It’s been nearly two years since I last saw him and there’ve been
several plot-twists and crossover events since then.It feels like last week, but it wasn’t.Every day feels the same so it’s hard to
measure progress except with notebooks and supporting characters.

We stop at chez J briefly, just long
enough for the cats to approve me, then back on the road.We have a spicy lunch with the annoyingly-talented
Iain Martin, writer of the Winterhill series.He’s just finished the next volume
and it needs a cover.This is great news
for several reasons beyond the obvious.2

Our plates and Iain are gone and Kev’s escorting me into the heart of empire.We’re lowered into the deleted scenes of An American Werewolf in London and then escalate
up, into the long shadow of the British Museum where another museum crouches.

The Cartoon Museum doesn’t really exist, which makes visiting it a truly unique
experience.As I’ve said before, the UK tolerates comics on the
condition it can keep a big stick handy for anytime the medium looks like forgetting its place.This anomaly fits in
the street the same way a shadow fills the missing piece of a risky Jenga
tower.It’s an honourable tribute to a
medium that the British have a damn good case to having invented.Unlike most of British history, it’s a first
worth being proud of.(Okay, it’s the
Scots who really invented comics as
we know them but let’s not get caught up debating something as toxic as
nationalism, shall we?)

Kev and I drift through the downstairs historical exhibition of cartoons.It’s got some of everything that the ‘great
and the good’ might regard as worth spending all that Lottery money on.Cruikshank, Bell, Scarfe, Giles, tints and
originals all preserved for future generations of Private Eye readers.It’s
breathtaking, but it’s not why we’re here today.We’re here for the loftier and, in many ways,
much more socially important exhibition. The one that’s upstairs.

Eighty original pieces of 2000 AD
artwork arranged in an approximate chronological order forest the upstairs
gallery.Clinging to walls and scowling
over the balcony, many much larger than you’d expect, they represent layers of
cultural experience.Each brushstroke
and every lettering bubble will have touched untold lives.Some more than others.

Many of the pieces come from damn impressive collections.David Roach’s is obviously world
standard.

One Friday over a lifetime
ago, my Dad brought home a copy of a fanzine called Hellfire.It had a Garry
Leach cover and a roundtable interview with Alan (no relation to Steve) Moore
and David Lloyd that introduced me to Repo Man amongst other things.Apparently it’d been put together by the
children of a lady he worked with.The
two brothers were opening a comic shop of sorts in a Cardiff market, selling off their collections for some reason.I went in, picked up the complete Bozz Chronicles at a bargain price and
talked to the shorter-haired Roach brother about Ramon Sola for far longer than
was polite.He put up with me and let me
know that he’d drawn a Purity Brown strip that’d be appearing in 2000 AD sometime soon.These days that same Roach brother inks the
main Doctor Who comic and is lauded
for his exquisite work on Judge Anderson’s strips, amongst others.His feather-delicate style is more confident
now, but retains the breathtaking touches originally exhibited in Hellfire’s back-up strip.

Two of the pieces on display freak me out because they shouldn’t be
there.The last time I saw the Judge Child Quest page was in Mackintosh
Place in Cardiff.Back then it was owned
by a chap called Martin O'Shea.I’d spend hours
staring at it, taking in the parts that didn’t reproduce mechanically, looking
through the lettering at the hidden artwork underneath, wondering why some ink
aged quicker than others.We’d drink
vodka and talk bollocks.Eventually I
messed up both an inking job Martin offered me and a chance to promote his book, The Least Among Us.The Kevin O’Neill Nemesis page on display was also Martin's – he had all his artwork in the same style of frame.Something dry and ancient moves through me
for a moment and I forget where I am.

Shortly after self-sabotaging my A-levels, I get forced to leave home.Everything I didn't manage to stuff into a black bag – books, records,
comics, posters and artwork – got thrown away. I was lucky enough to
be plucked up and dropped, with restrictions, into Cardiff. Not everyone gets a second-chance.I ended up working through the weeks as an
early-morning cleaner in Cyncoed and as an input-monkey on Newport Road in the
mid-afternoons.The labouring was
offset with exam retakes, courtesy of Coleg Glan Hafren’s randomly scattered locations,
and trips to Spillers Records.English
Lit A-level took up Friday mornings in the college’s main campus. It was
during those lessons that I made friends with Mike, one of the most genuine
gentlemen I’ve ever met.Mike in turn
introduced me to Martin, a long-time friend of his who was also into 2000 AD.

Years earlier, when life was straighter, taking the coach from Clevedon to
London was a major event.London’s more a country than a city and those childhood journeys were very much like trips
abroad.Back then London would get films
months before the rest of us.It had
underground trains and a comic shop that sold issues from months in the future
too.Visiting the actual Forbidden
Planet was unreal.

Every article about Denmark Street seems to repeat its status as ‘London’s Tin
Pan Alley’.There’s something in the
area that encourages rock music and ink. Good luck working in something about the
foundations being laid in the remains of a leper hospital.The street’s musical history includes the
respectable flogging of instruments and sheet music, but there’s also something
subtler.Denmark Street is a background
setting to so many different forces that’ve shaped my life walking down it now
should trigger arcs of significant energy with each step.Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Dennis Nilsen, who inspired a book that both inspired a conversation between
myself and another of Mike’s friends as well a song by Swans, worked on Denmark Street. The
Lower Third drank here with David Jones.Black Sabbath recorded their first two albums in a low-level
studio, lyrics based solidly on the works of Dennis Wheatley (that’s Crowley
covered then).Kinks, Tom Jones, Yardbirds,
Paul ‘You Can Call Me Al’ Simon and Sex Pistols are shared ghosts in our
historical architectures.Periodically
speaking, Melody Maker and the NME lived here for years, and, though the
wordcounts may've varied, I’m pleased to have been in bands that were tattooed into their pages.Centre Point looms. Whilst it’s easy to trace a connection to
this piece of Mega-City sculpture to the music clubs of South Wales, we’re
already in the rough.

Forbidden Planet cropped up as something other than an advert in comics
too.I experienced another strange
feeling of something passing through me when I realised I’d visited the shop
that was giving Betsy Braddock such a headache in Captain Britain.Co-founder
Mike Lake’s bright red Ferrari got trashed in a tussle between Warlock and
Impossible Man in the third New Mutants
annual.I had it on good authority from the Roach
brother mentioned earlier that Marvel got the car’s colour wrong.It’s
interesting that both stories were drawn by Alan Davis. Shame it doesn’t mean
anything.Fairly recently, Little Jimmy
Fnord, Alan Moore’s Scottish Tribute Act, tried to muscle in on the action by including a
mention of Forbidden Planet Scotland’s overseas branch in a largely unreadable
issue of The Authority, but who
cares?Landau’s a Titan; no Eagles for
Nicking his ideas.

We headed back to Kev and Penny’s for a skim through the collected Meltdown Man, followed by an excellent curry and an exhausted sleep. My responsibilities were in a different country.

The morning’s foggy, frosty and there’s a scrim of snow.We head toward Hammersmith via the cover of Animals.

Your whole life’s been leading to every morning, so why should one feel
more significant than any other?

Bonus strip in the Meltdown Man Collected Edition.

The past
is a river.Downstream's infant school
and pristine issues of Doctor Who Comic
(that’s what it’s called).Well, I say
pristine, but they’ve got my Dad’s surname written in biro near the top of the
back cover.I recognise the Abslom Daak artist from Hulk Comic.He’s my favourite artist in the whole
world.

Comics and distraction; junior school years.The Dentist’s waiting room has comic annuals, one with a story about a
giant black dog, a Shuck brought down by Puritan
gunmen.The Doctor’s noisy space has
dismembered Bolland pages: a sobbing astronaut is hauled away from a failed
simulated flight.The classroom windows
use steam to block out the rain; a Portrait of a Mutant fixed forever on a
crayon-enhanced page in my small hands. I don’t try and read the story because
I’m put off by ‘PART II’.It can’t mean ‘part eleven’ as that’s beyond the scale of comprehension for someone
living in the now.I’m aware of Roman
Numerals, but they don’t help either.

Suddenly: 1985!I’m in a Comprehensive
education system, reading the debut issue of The Best of 2000 AD Monthly. The
Blood of Satanus acts as a dry-run for Cry
of the Werewolf just fine; the second story is drawn by my favourite artist
in the whole world and written by someone who’s more than registered on my
radar as ‘one to watch’; the debut Rogue
Trooper story does what it does with aplomb – Gunnar’s been my favourite
character for years already; Strontium
Dog and Judge Minty tie in with
fandom beautifully and the final Future
Shock is from the team that’ll change the world I'll eventually live in.A full page ad for Forbidden Planet covers
the back.Less a comic, more
a distillation of childhood.

I’m in a car that’s driving through Cheddar Gorge, reading the first issue of
Eagle Comics’ Stainless Steel Rat
reprint.It’s a Sunday and we’ve been
out for a spin with a family friend and her dog.I’m lost in the comic when something growls
and then grabs my head, tugging hard.Suddenly it’s not just Jim diGriz that’s slippery.

The car pulls to a halt.

Someone’s
screaming.

I miss Hancock’s The Blood Donor because I’m having my
head stitched up.During the
recuperation period I discover John Peel and White Zombie’s Acid Flesh.One of the lads from the Sixth Year is impressed with my
knowledge.He’s wearing the Judge Death
badge from that Forbidden Planet advert.

I’m indulging in mammoth re-reads.Progs
piled up, open to the pages of whichever story I’m tracking:Dredd,
Skizz, Slaine, Ace Trucking Co.,
Robo-Hunter, Rogue Trooper, D.R. &
Quinch, all read over and over and over.Sometime around now Marvel’s Secret Wars kicks off and I meet Chubb for
the first time.He’s a couple of years
older than me, give or take.Some guy
called Fabry starts drawing Slaine
and instantly becomes my new favourite artist in the whole world.

I discover music properly.I start on soundtracks and then move onto whatever moves me.I’ve got
no shit-filter with music, so I like what I like.This way holds cowboy boots, ridicule from
musos and an accidental (and unbroadcastable) Peel Session, but I don't know that yet.I write a letter telling Glenn Fabry how
great he is and post it, care of Tharg.

Pat Mills sends thoughtful replies to my letters.He takes the things I write seriously and isn’t sniffy about comics.I’m not having a great time in school.The snobbery of English teachers is causing difficulties. I’m probably capable of producing work they’d delight to approve of.

I’m reading The
White Goddess, as recommended by Pat Mills, in a History lesson that’s been
boring me.The teacher takes notice and
talks to me about it, Robert Graves and then comics.For the next few months I excel in History.

An Original Mills. 1987.

An(other) Original Mills. 1987.

My favourite teacher is off on a long-term illness.I’m so far ahead of the rest of the History
class at this point that the supply teacher’s got nothing for me to do.I start working on my first fanzine.Chubb lends me a comic called Redfox.The publisher’s bringing out a series called The Adventures of Luther Arkwright soon.I like what I’ve seen of the Luther artist’s work in
2000 AD and Diceman, so I use my birthday money to take out a
subscription.Having realised that
school’s pointless, I waste as little time on it as I can and devote
myself to reading and writing instead.Parents are called in for emergency meetings about my cynicism and comics obsession.

It's the arse-end of 1986. I buy four copies of Prog 500 from the Queen Street WH Smith in Cardiff.Chris Bell, the writer of Redfox and publisher of Luther Arkwright writes back to me, also
offering advice about writing and breaking into comics in general.By now, Chubb and myself have become an
almost double-act. We visit Chris in Bristol.She buys us Chinese and shows us around Wiltshire Printers.It’s crazy because the only thing being
printed is Prog 549.Huge stacks of
issues sprout from the concrete floor, all topped with Dave Gibbons’ Zenith cover.The printers treat us as VIPs.The noise is incredible.Back at Chris’s, just off Whiteladies Road,
we see the original art for the second book of LutherArkwright.Chris explains that, yes, that really is what
tunnel vision looks like as you're passing out.
Later on she drives me to meet Luther'screator after a signing he's done in Bristol's Forever People. Being an idiot, I'm too nervous to speak to him.

Chubb makes me compilation tapes of bands that don’t make the
charts.My life is full of beautiful
art, talented people, great music and friends who respect me.

Unfortunately that’s not how school works.

Original Bell(s). 1987

I try writing about the collected edition of Watchmen as part of my English
Literature coursework. It’s a waste of
time.I’ve made friends with a lad
called Byron who also reads comics.He’s
got the thickest ginger hair you could imagine and, like most of us, he’s
growing it.Despite Chubb’s more nuanced
musical input, I’ve moved from Queen to Anthrax to Metallica to Slayer and
recently started dabbling with Christian Death and Fields of the Nephilim.I’ve also produced a stream-of-consciousness
monstrosity called Wormbait that I’m
trying to pass off as a stripzine.If it
was intelligible then it’d be obvious I’ve just lifted all the bits I like from
other places.Years later I figure out
that’s how everyone starts, whether
they’re writing fiction, drawing or starting up a band.It’s only when you’ve hacked away your
influences that you find out who you are.Wormbait teaches me a lot about
how not to make a comic.Sensibly, I make completely different
mistakes with the next one.

Pat Mills puts me in touch with a couple of fairly-local folk who also want to
make comics.One’s a writer, the other’s
an artist.Together we pull together a
new fanzine called Overview.I commission a cover from Glenn Fabry and pay
for it with birthday money. Being a lovely bloke, Mr Fabry provides an introduction
gratis and Mike Collins provides a pencil drawing of Doctor Fate that I'm told I'm not allowed to ink.

Overview's print-run destroys a
photocopier but doesn’t cost us anything.As soon as I start getting complaints about the ‘zine not been printed
proper I finally understand how success is a collaborative effort but anything
less than success is my fault alone. Chris invites me to that year’s
UKCAC, promising my parents that she’ll look after me.I’m not allowed to go. The others head
down to flog the ‘zine.I stay at home
feeling a pure bright-lime jealousy, like only a sulking teenager can.That’s all I'm willing to say right now.Ask me when you’re
older.

Neil
Gaiman is just starting to make his way into comics from journalism and
collaborations with Kim Newman.Harlan
Ellison isn’t in, so I leave a message on his answerphone and try the last
number on my list. This number belongs to an artist flying high on the success of Watchmen and one of
the most famous comic creators around. He doesn’t sound at all happy to be talking to me.

How did I got this number?

I bluster. I don’t have it anymore. This doesn’t convince
him.

Bright, burning red and dripping
with sweat, I wish him a Merry Christmas.

He returns the wish, on the condition I never speak to him again, and
hangs up.

I'm shaking for over an hour.

2017. Kev gets us in.We get
tagged and given bags and a floor to sit on.I realise that this is the first comic convention I’ve ever been to.The doors open and we’re led in.Tables everywhere.Looks like the Bryan Talbot double-spread
Torquemada Convention from Nemesis in many ways.I don’t know where to start, there’s too much
to take in.In the end I decided against
bringing the first issue of The Best Of
and dragged along my last surviving copy of Prog 500.Christ.That’s Ian Kennedy there and nobody’s talking to him.He shakes my hand and takes my sputtering
noises about it being an honour with soft grace, as do Jesus Redondo and Steve MacManus.The atmosphere’s relaxed and there’s a sense
of belonging.A definite
demographic surges through the spaces in the room.

Although there hasn’t actually been a decent Doctor Who comic story written since the
100th issue of Doctor Who
Magazine, a lot of the artwork since then's been great.Arthur Ranson’s guilty of beautiful McCoy-era
work. He walks by me when I’m in a queue, so I miss my chance to say
hello.Two of my favourite Who artists –
Roger Langridge and Ben Willsher – draw me their takes on Tom Baker.Later on I’m lucky enough to bump into Mick McMahon
who shakes my hand and accepts my commission of a Tom Baker illustration, as
long as I get in touch.This is
crazy.Something passes through me,
shuddering with delight as it goes.

An Original Langridge. 2017.

An Original Willsher. Also 2017.

Kev and I check out the Originals and John Wagner/Carlos Esquerra panels.Both are moderated by people who seem to be
pushing a weird agenda.Just because
there’s been a satirical edge to 2000 AD
since it started, I don’t think there’s a case to be argued that it acts as a gateway
drug to Private Eye, no matter how
much the current publishers might want it to.John Wagner says something about the
disrespect dealt to one of his creations by another writer.Researching this, I re-read the stories in
question and can’t disagree.I’m
intrigued to note that the same turgid period featured review droid Roxilla’s
occasional take on floor-fillin’, bangin' choons.Both The KLF and Sheeps (sic) On Drugs get their points missed.It’s very telling.

David Roach is still lovely. He's terrified at how good my memory is. Kev and I head to the
premiere of Search/Destroy.Kev says the
day feels like one of the old UKCACs.

Pat Mills shakes my hand and accepts my thanks graciously.There’s not the time to explain the impact
he’s had on me.And why should there
be?Everyone else in the hall is living
a variation of the same life.It’s the
same story, just with different soundtracks.

Dave Gibbons can’t remember the phone call at all.He laughs heartily as I shake his hand and
wish him a final Merry Christmas for the second time.

“And a Merry Christmas to you too, Al.”

Byron was knocked down and killed while walking home from a festival.The driver’s never been found.

The past is quicksand: it’s soft and it sucks.The longer you walk through it, the harder it is to leave.There’s a brief moment in your youth when the
future’s still yours, but you don’t know that yet.

The past is a glamour: the moment you realise those delicate-brushed cheekbones
have scales is far, far too late.Scream
a golden scream and get on with dying well.

The past is a river and time-travel is closer to real drowning than it is to anything
Romantic. Everything you were, wanted
and wished is safely downstream now.Yes, things were better then, but you can never go back. Keep moving forward across the damned soil;
keep trekking through this hell.

Drokk: Music Inspired By Mega-CityOne
(the special edition with the bonus tracks)Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury

I Am The LawAnthrax

I Am The LawThe Human League

I’m Hanging Out With HaloJonesTransvision Vamp

Judge DreddLoose Talk

Judge Dredd Soundtrack
(extended version)Alan Silvestri

Judge Yr’SelfLe Manics

Music From and ‘Inspired’ by Judge
DreddAlan Silvestri and Chums

Mutants In Mega-City One

The Fink Brothers

Nemesis The Warlock
Rob Hubbard

2. Y’see, somewhere in the future,
this essay has been physically fixed into an actual, proper, printed book. Or, at least, it will be when I’ve chipped
away all the accreted time that’s built up between then and now like limescale
furring a kettle’s element. ‘Timescale’, maybe? Tch.
Suit yourself.

Anyway, quick message to the Eloi reading these words: flick back to the start
and treat yourself to Iain’s thoughtful and beautiful introduction.

3.
Furthermore known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, also known as The
KLF and the K Foundation and all that.

In
1987 I didn’t have a clue, but that’s a plot thread that winds through a different
piece of extended typing that sits, in the future, on a different shelf in the
British Museum to where you found this.